Compiled by JOHN COLLINS

Your stolen camera

It’s a little-known fact but every picture you take with your digital camera contains a huge amount of embedded data including, rather helpfully, the serial number of your camera.

The clever people at Stolencamerafinder have harnessed that information to reunite stolen cameras with their owners. Simply drag and drop a picture taken with a lost camera onto the box on the homepage and the site will tell you if pictures taken with it have been posted online recently.

Currently with one million camera sightings in its database, this service can only become more useful. www.stolencamerafinder.com

Tim Berners-Lee on open data

At its annual conference yesterday, the Irish Internet Association called on the Government to open data to its citizens. What might such a move achieve? In this TED talk, worldwide web inventor Tim Berners-Lee shows just what can be achieved when government data is let free for developers to play with. From maps of cycling accident blackspots to what taxes are being spent on, the five-minute video shows the potential for better government by giving citizens back their data.

http://is.gd/I8Gnab

Start-up ideas that consistently fail

We scratched our heads a little when question and answer website Quora suddenly became the online flavour of the week at the start of the year but it is now attracting enough users to become really useful.

One particular question caught our eye: What are some start-up ideas that persistently fail? Seems if you think you’ve got a killer idea for a dating site, a T-shirt site or yet another tool for creating personalised news, the group wisdom of Quora is think again.

http://is.gd/84OlFb

The Irish Sports Council iPhone app

The Irish Sports Council claims to have scored a world first with an anti-doping app for the iPhone, which tells sports people if their medication breaks the rules. The free app accesses the Eirpharm Drugs in Sport Database which lists the drugs prohibited by the World Anti-Doping Agency.

Although aimed at professional sports people, the app provides a wealth of information on over-the-counter medications for anyone interested in their health.

http://is.gd/4OBXmQ